Along with carbon, water is the other great problem of this century. And, of course, the two are intimately related because the biggest impacts of carbon-driven climate change are projected to be on the hydrological cycle.

The American Prospect magazine has a special report on the water crisis in its June issue. If you want to get up to speed on the water issue, this is a good place to start:

At what point do we make the connection: “hey, they have a HELL of a lot of extra water in Iowa/Indiana/Illinois/Wisconsin etc, RIGHT NOW. Could we capture as much of it as possible and distribute to the West?” Course, it would need to be filtered heavily, but it is FRESH, not saltwater.

Joe,
I read somewhere that this spring the IPCC was going to release a report on drought, but so far their website doesn’t say anything about it, and I haven’t heard anything else about it. Do you know anything about this?

David Benson, it reminds me when we had an earlier drought in California, and our Japanese guests asked about what we drank. We answered “beer”, and they asked “doesn’t that take water too?” and we answered, “we drink Japanese beer.” :-)

But seriously, I prefer the solution found in Earthships: collect rainwater in a cistern and filter it, use that for drinking, cooking, and showering. The wastewater from these activities is then filtered through the indoor greenhouse growing beds, and the nearly pure result is used for flushing toilets. That water is then filtered through the outdoor planting beds. Thus the water is used four times.